Could intelligent aliens lurk in the heart of the galaxy?
A new search for extraterrestrial life aims to discover it by listening to radio pulses from the center of our galaxy. Narrow-frequency pulses are naturally emitted by stars called pulsars, but they are also used purposefully by humans in technology such as radar. Because these pulses stand out against the background noise of space, they’re an effective way to communicate over long distances — and an attractive target to listen for when searching for extraterrestrial civilizations.
Scientists described the alien hunting strategy in a new study, published May 30 The astronomical magazine. Researchers led by a graduate student at Cornell University Akshay Suresh developed software to detect these repetitive frequency patterns and tested it on known pulsars to make sure it could pick up the narrow frequencies. These frequency ranges are very small, about one-tenth of the frequency width used by a typical FM radio station. The researchers then searched data from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia using the method.
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“Until now, radio SETI has mainly focused its efforts on searching for continuous signals,” study co-author Vishal Gajjar of the SETI Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the search for intelligent life in the universe, said in a rack. “Our study sheds light on the remarkable energy efficiency of a series of pulses as a means of interstellar communication over long distances. In particular, this study marks the first-ever comprehensive effort to conduct in-depth studies of these signals.”
The researchers listen in on the middle of the Milky Way because it is close to stars and potentially habitable exoplanets. In fact, if intelligent aliens at the core of the galaxy wanted to reach the rest of the galaxy, they could send signals across a wide variety of planets, given their privileged position at the center of the galaxy. Using narrow bandwidths and repeated patterns would be an excellent way for aliens to reveal themselves, as such a combination is extremely unlikely to occur naturally, study co-author Steve Crofta project scientist with the Breakthrough Listen program, said in a separate rack.
The method uses an algorithm that can search 1.5 million telescope data in 30 minutes. While researchers found no signs in their initial search, they say the speed of the algorithm will help improve searches in the future.
“Breakthrough Listen captures massive amounts of data, and Akshay’s technique provides a new method to help us sift through that haystack for needles that could provide tantalizing evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life forms,” Croft said.
